Date of Award
8-12-2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Type
Dissertation
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes four Broadway musicals that are adaptations of popular films and novels: Legally Blonde, Fun Home, Waitress, and Mean Girls. These texts are performed in the 21st century and each stages either sexual assault or the fear of a sexual assault that is narrowly avoided. More narrowly, this dissertation focuses on the 2007-2018 time period in which these musicals were performed, thus leading up to and through Alyssa Milano's pivotal #metoo message on Twitter. The dissertation reads the review and marketing milieux in which these musicals existed, as well as each text in performance, to theorize how spectators in this time period were invited to learn new ways of thinking about the "real" world which echoes through the narrative, music, and embodied performance of each musical. Through these readings, the dissertation posits that a utopian mindset toward the feminism(s) that Milano invoked in 2017 is not only modeled by each text's protagonist, but also the aesthetic experience, carried by the power of narrative, that spectators are invited to undertake alongside those protagonists as they perform. In so doing, like #metoo, the spectator is liberated to think in new ways about women's bodies and imagine futures wherein those bodies are freed from the damage of the present's patriarchal powers.
Language
English (en)
Chair and Committee
Julia Walker
Committee Members
Christopher Eng; Henry Schvey; Melanie Micir; Paige McGinley
Recommended Citation
Reaugh, Stephen, "“The Limit Does Not Exist”: Utopian and Feminist Pedagogies in 21st-Century Broadway Musicals" (2024). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3320.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/3320